This split can grow much worse if the conflict in Donbass continues. But even if it stops, reconciliation is not on the cards. This means that in the foreseeable future there will be no common security system on the continent of Europe, no commonly agreed-upon norms and no rules of behaviour. The world disorder has entered the recently most stable and best-regulated part of the globe: Europe.(…)
If the ceasefire becomes permanent, the “people’s republics” will be physically safe and can start turning themselves into functioning entities on the models of Transnistria. Russia will need to supply them with more than weapons and humanitarian assistance, straining its resources even more, but there’s hardly an alternative. For Putin, and most Russians, these are “our people”. (…)
The German-Russian relationship, a mainstay of Europe’s post-cold war stability, has dangerously frayed. (…)
Yet, Ukraine and the global crisis over it point to the start of a new period in world politics. Great powers – Russia overtly, China covertly – are challenging the US-dominated order. Nationalism, on the rise in places from Turkey to India to Japan, leads to a further erosion of that order. Attempts to degrade and destroy Islamic State have yielded only partial, reversible results.(…)
Having lost Russia as a partner and gained Ukraine as a new responsibility, Europe is uncertain what to do.